


Wraith

by nothingtodeclare (tehtarik)



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Abuse, Angst, Domestic Violence, Emotional Manipulation, M/M, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-28
Updated: 2016-12-11
Packaged: 2018-09-02 20:08:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8681719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tehtarik/pseuds/nothingtodeclare
Summary: There is a place that Credence forces himself to think of each time Mama orders him to remove his belt. 

 
 
A series of Credence-centric drabbles / ficlets.





	1. rooftops

**Author's Note:**

> Accidentally orphaned this :O http://archiveofourown.org/works/8671315/chapters/19877722 Am reposting &continuing.

There is a place that Credence forces himself to think of each time Mama orders him to remove his belt: the rooftop of the Raffles Building on East 161st Street. It isn't the exactly a pleasant place, but the less agreeable it is, the easier to conjure. 

When the leather tears into his palm, he hears the frenzy of pigeons, and their mad wingbeats flood his chest. When the next lash scrapes its way into the narrow length of his back, he smells the droppings of the birds, sees their white and green blotches on the concrete. The belt cuts a stripe into the backs of his thighs and he chokes on the soot of factory chimneys.

When his whole body is rucked with pain so he can no longer tell the angle of assault, or at what frequency, he starts to see further out into the city: the teething sprawl of buildings, billowing and breaking their ranks and greying out before him into a mirage of tears until there is nothing left but his fingernails, sunk into the wood of the banister.

The belt is lying beside him, on the floor.

Ma caresses him sometimes, after she’s finished. She pushes his head into her chest and whispers into his hair. “I am not cruel. You must know that this is necessary.”

“It is necessary,” he repeats after her.

“Why have I named you Credence?”

“Because you have hope for me.” As soon as he says these words, gratitude germinates like a seed in his chest.

“Do you remember what they used to call you before I brought you into my house and raised you as my own?”

_Freak. Cretin, cretin, cretin._

He breaks to pieces in her arms, and through his sobs he counts. Sure enough, Mama, precise as clockwork, pushes him away after ten seconds and tells him to wash his face and clean up.

Only after Ma goes to bed, does he open the shutters and peer out at the city, lit by the jaundiced glow of streetlamps, and think of Graves.


	2. shame

Then there is Mr. Graves.

How to put words to him?

Credence becomes aware of him one morning, while he is following Mama, his arms full of New Salem Philanthropic Society pamphlets. New York is a city of flux: its streets are rivers of people, automobiles, buses, carriages, bright yellow taxicabs. The city has its own diurnal cycles and its own purpose, and when New York swoops down and catches you, you move. You follow the crowds hurrying from one point to another, hats pulled down to collars, gloved hands in pockets or clasping the handles of briefcases.

But not Mr. Graves. Graves is a point of stillness, a fixture of a man in a landscape of fluctuation. The crowds split around him and carry on. Graves is looking right across the street at Credence, through Ma and Chastity as though all the world were transparent and Credence with his stooped posture and his broken, hungry eyes is the only solid point of reference.

A tram clatters between them and Graves disappears.

Credence lies in bed that night, the hairs on his arms standing up as he thinks of the well-groomed stranger in the dark woollen overcoat, watching him.

A week later, he sees Graves again, next to a newsstand across 153rd Street. Mr. Graves gestures to him, a slight tilt of the head, his hooded gaze pinning Credence to the spot so he can’t look anywhere else.

“Go and spread the word to those who are still ignorant to our cause.” Ma, who thankfully has noticed nothing, nudges him while straightening the knot of his tie. She adds more pamphlets to the pile in his arms. “Don’t be idle today, Credence.”

And Credence seizes the opportunity.

He slips into an alleyway between a pawnshop and an antique dealership. Fire escapes run like twisted metal fences up the walls.

“Credence Barebone,” says Mr. Graves, stepping out from the gloom of the alleyway.

Credence stutters out all the predictable questions: the _how, who, what, why_.

“In time,” says Graves, “I will explain. You will learn everything there is to know about this world.”

It is enough for Credence to know that he is chosen, that his name is known to someone other than Mama or Modesty or Chastity, that there are mysteries in this life that soon he will be privy to. But this isn’t all.

Something catches Graves’ eye, and to Credence’s horror, he realises that it is his own hand, striated with cuts from the same belt clinched around his waist. Graves reaches out and takes his hand, turns it over to expose his palm. Shame scorches Credence’s cheeks, but Graves doesn’t let go. He flicks the sleeve up an inch to uncover the ends of more red welts. His expression is inscrutable.

“It’s – it’s Mama. They will go away,” Credence stammers, unable to bear the silence and the humiliation of this exposure.

“So they will.” Graves closes Credence’s fingers into a loose fist, and squeezes his thumb gently. Then he lets go and walks deeper into the alleyway. It is a dead end, but before Graves reaches the wall, he disappears in a swirl of air. Credence uncurls his fingers, trying to remember warmth on his knuckles, the pressure of Mr. Graves’s hand around his wrist.

He brings his own hand to his face and smells smoke and something bitter, almost herbal. When Credence turns his hand over, the cuts have healed into slender white scars.

 

 


	3. contact

Graves knows exactly how to touch Credence, and where.

They meet in alleyways, Graves beckoning through the fissures of moving crowds, and Credence’s eye never fails to catch him. Credence searches for him every day when he steps out of the New Salem headquarters and into the city. Most days Graves eludes him, and there is nothing but New York - dense, smoky, and indecipherable.

But when they meet – oh, when they meet!

“There is a world beyond your misery,” Graves tells him, “and you are part of it.”

“When?” Credence asks one day, and his usual wisp of a voice is sharp. All these weeks of hints, of secret meetings, of careless details that Graves tells, have made Credence impatient. “When do I start belonging to it?”

“When you help me.” Graves’s answer is soothing. He raises his hand and places it at the side of Credence’s neck, just beneath his jaw. His palm is rough, and the long sinewy fingers reach the back of Credence’s ear.

Contact is a shocking thing for Credence. He knows the five senses in theory: sight, hearing, smell, taste, _touch_. Or so he thought.

What is this sensation of _touch_ that he has never really paid attention to? Skin on skin, mediated pressure, does it mean anything if someone puts their hand on you for longer than usual?

The next time, Graves cups Credence’s chin between his thumb and forefinger.

Soon Graves leaves invisible indentations all over Credence’s body: his head, the nape of his neck, wrists, hands, cheeks, shoulder blades. And all Credence can do is fight the urge to press every inch of his weight into Mr. Graves’s touch, to burrow into Mr. Graves’s skin, to go beyond skin and dig into heat and substance.

“You are a void, Credence Barebone,” Mr. Graves says. “The biggest and most ravenous void I’ve ever met.”

And Credence is suddenly sickened, a whirlwind of shame coursing through him. Graves’s eyes are boring into him, unsmiling. Because what does he do when Mr. Graves is not around?

At nights, upstairs in the NSPS chapel on Pike Street, Credence lies in bed and remembers the perplexity of Mr. Graves’s _touch_. He feels the side of his neck and his face, runs fingers through his hair, trying to mimic the imprint and pressure of Graves’s hands. And inevitably his hand finds its way down below the waistband to his crotch, where he is hard, desperate, aching.

When he comes, he imagines Mr. Graves watching, looking down at him, pinning him down to the sheets with his hard eyes. He swallows and shame blisters through his thoughts as he lies there, sticky, drained, exhausted, before tumbling into the emptiness of sleep.


End file.
